Wednesday, June 17, 2009

My Kind of Town, New York City

You know that you’re a New Yorker when you don’t really care about the tourist stuff. I grew up in the New York City area and certainly spent a lot of time in the city. I spent my senior year in college literally next to the Brooklyn Bridge at Pace University on Park Row across from City Hall. We used to sometimes hang out at a bar called Jeremy’s which was almost under the bridge between the school and the East River. But, it never occurred to me to walk out onto the bridge to check it out or just to admire the scene of Manhattan from it.

I haven’t lived in the Northeast for over 14 years but, I had to travel there recently for a job in Brooklyn. I decided to treat part of my stay in Brooklyn like a tourist. I did check out the sights of the city and I did walk out across the Brooklyn Bridge a few times. There were some locals running and biking but, for the most part the crowd consisted of tourists from all over the world.

That area of Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan are probably some of the most photographed scenes in the world. It is easy to see why. In addition of NYC having a high concentration of the best photographers in the world, there are just a lot of stunning scenes everywhere you look. The landscapes of the skyline and architecture especially of lower Manhattan set in New York Harbor are really impressive. The bridge itself is both a piece of art and a piece of American History all at the same time. There are all kinds of people and all kinds of things happening all in a very concentrated area. I think that I took much of NYC for granted when I lived there. I suppose that I had to step away in order to see what was in front of me the whole time.